How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave

Winner, 2022 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize

The divine and the digital achieve a distinct corporality in Maya Salameh’s How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave, winner of the 2022 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. Layering prayer with code, Salameh brings supposedly unassailable technological constructs like algorithm, recursion, and loop into conversation with the technologies of womanhood, whether liner, lipstick, or blood. Exploring the relationships we have with our devices, she speaks back to the algorithm (“a computer’s admission to blood”), which acts simultaneously as warden, confidant, and data thief.

Here Salameh boldly examines how an Arab woman survives the digitization of her body—experimenting with form to create an intimate collage of personal and neocolonial histories, fearlessly insinuating herself into the scripts that would otherwise erase her (“a code & a homily are both instructions”), and giving voice to the full mess of ritual.